Interview: George Clooney and Sandra Bullock serve up some political satire in ‘Our Brand Is Crisis’

Ed SymkusMore Content Now

Monday

Oct 19, 2015 at 9:34 AMOct 19, 2015 at 9:34 AM

When George Clooney and Sandra Bullock last worked together, in the 2013 film “Gravity,” they both stayed on the acting side of things. In their newest collaboration, the political satire “Our Brand Is Crisis,” Clooney is a producer, and Bullock is an executive producer. But only Bullock gets in front of the camera. The film is “suggested by” the 2005 documentary of the same name about a Bolivian presidential election during which Bill Clinton’s campaign manager James Carville was hired to market one of the candidates. The script for this fictionalized version originally had a male lead (rumored to be for Clooney), but a suggestion from Bullock resulted in a gender switch. She plays Jane Bodine, a once-in-demand political strategist who, after a few failures and much self doubt, called it quits. But she’s lured back into the game, to help sell a Bolivian candidate, after discovering that her longtime nemesis, the political strategist Pat Candy (Billy Bob Thornton), is representing a rival Bolivian candidate. Clooney and Bullock spoke last week in Los Angeles.

Q: Was it a good time working together again?

Bullock: George and I have known each other since a couple of years out of college. What’s nice is to be ABLE to work together. To be able to sit with George and argue about what we’re passionate about. We all come from different places, but we came up with an end result which is what was best for the movie.

Clooney: There’s also something great about the idea that when we first met, for the most part we really couldn’t even get hired. It’s fun that now that we’re in the middle of an incredibly creative period in our lives, Sandy can call up and say, “I’d like to do this part in the movie,” and I say, “Which part?” and she says, “The guy,” and it actually made sense.

Q: Sandy, what made you think of turning the male part into a female part?

Bullock: My quest started before this film, when I was looking at comedies. I wondered why is it that the only comedy available for women is in romantic comedy. So I said I wanted to look at every script that Jim Carrey didn’t want to do (laughs), to see if the part can be switched. But nothing really popped up that I felt was extraordinary till “The Heat” showed up, which I felt came out of the need for women to have a comedy that wasn’t centered around getting a man. I’ve learned that sometimes it’s just asking, and I’m glad I asked on this one. George and Grant [Heslov, his producing partner] could have said no, but they didn’t. This was something they developed for a long time, so it could have very precious, or I could have changed the tone that they were looking for.

Clooney: But there’s another part of this. We wanted to work with you, and the minute you suggested the idea, we looked at it and thought that it was silly that we would think it WOULDN’T work. It made total sense.

Q: George, this film really skewers politics. Do you still believe in the political process?

Clooney: Of course I do. I believe that government, at its best, is designed to look after the people who can’t look after themselves. I think it’s our responsibility as citizens to hold our government to task for that.

Q: Would you ever run for office?

Clooney: I’ve been asked that for almost 20 years now, and the answer is no. Who would ever want to live like that? I commend people who go into public service, because it’s a horrible process to get elected, and such a horrible time when you’re in office. So I have no interest in being in politics. But I have every interest in being involved from the outside and trying to get things done I think are important.

Q: Sandy, do you think there’s a need for a Jane and Pat in politics?

Bullock: I’d rather no one have a Jane and Pat. Because of the way the world is today, you can’t live a hidden life. Everything is going to found out about someone running for office. I’d rather everyone mess up and present exactly who they are, and not have things be so well run and oiled and manipulated, so we can make a decision about who we want based on who the people truly are.

Q: There’s an action scene in the film where you’re on a bus that’s out of control. Did you have any “Speed” flashbacks?

Bullock: If the bus in this one had been moving when we were on it, that would have been great. But we were in an airplane hangar in Puerto Rico, it was a hundred degrees, and there was green screen. It was a completely different experience than “Speed,” but yes, it felt like home; I felt like I was back to where I began. I do bus like nobody else.

Ed Symkus covers movies for More Content Now.

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